


Passing Judgment on my Life

by Dipenates



Series: The Sweet Smell of Air [1]
Category: CSI: Las Vegas
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Crime, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2010-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dipenates/pseuds/Dipenates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara and Nick are forced to look at their pasts as they investigate an assault on a child. Started life as a post-ep for 6X05: Gum Drops. <strong></strong></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sara had finished processing the Daniels’ knife and shoes and was in the locker room when Nick returned from interviewing Cassie McBride. He looked as tired as she was; his skin grey under the strip lighting that illuminated the lockers and benches.

He paused for a moment between stowing his jacket in his locker and taking out his street shoes, and looked her up and down. She knew that the dark circles under his eyes were twins of his own, and that her shoulders were slumped with fatigue and misery.

His voice broke into her thoughts. “Sara, would you like to join me for breakfast?”

Sara fought a wave of longing so intense it nearly made her knees buckle. The McBride case had awakened some ghosts and a coil of fear and tension and desperation was lying heavy in her stomach.

Every time a case involving a child came up she could tell from the looks of her colleagues that they suspected that it might have personal resonance for her. Warwick’s eyes full of gentleness and compassion. Nick’s and Greg’s courteously speculative, protecting her as best they could from the worst horrors of each individual case. Catherine’s wary and impatient.

Sara knew that Catherine found her occasional outbursts to be histrionic and that she had more than hinted to Grissom that Sara needed to be gently confronted about her response to cases involving violence against women and children.

Sara’s objective side could understand Catherine’s perspective, and even applaud its unsentimental kindness. Nick, Greg and Warrick’s avuncular protectiveness sometimes came off as patronising. The hurt, scared Sara, though, felt exposed and ashamed by Catherine’s judgment of her inability to rip the band-aid off, and found herself unable to curtail her brusqueness around the redhead.

Sara had thought for a long time that Nick might have ghosts of his own. She had a pretty decent spider sense when it came to childhood trauma and Nick was, after all, remorseless when it came to chasing down child abusers and killers. She had rejected that hypothesis eventually, and reminded herself that all decent, normal people felt protective toward children and did not need a movie-of-the-week back-story to feel outrage at innocence harmed.

For a while, though, she had wondered if his invitations to breakfast after a brutal case with a minor victim might lead to mutual confession and commiseration.

She thought of how delicious it would be to have Nick’s concerned eyes turned on her while she purged herself of some clammy, anxious memories. He was capable of enormous warmth and kindness, and she craved the comfort that might bring. But even as she could imagine the sense of warmth and giddy liberty that speaking to Nick would elicit, she could foresee the sucking wave of shame that would break over her afterwards.

She stashed her work jacket in her locker as her throat ached with unshed tears; reminding her of the days when she played Tori Amos and sucked down countless Marlboros in a bid to forget.

She wished someone would ask the question that had been hanging in the air like smoke since soon after her arrival in the Vegas crime lab; the question to which she was too afraid to volunteer the answer. She was exhausted by the constant cycle of remembering and forgetting and she knew that the McBride case would provoke nightmares, sleeplessness and that queasy sense of foreboding that would plague her for at least a week.

She closed her locker door, resting her palm and forehead against the cool metal.

“Sara?” Nick asked. He had put on his shoes and was leaning forward to lace them up.

Sara felt her stomach roil, tasted the bile rising in her throat. She straightened up and slung her bag over her shoulder.

“No thanks, Nick,” she said, as brightly as she could. “Some other time.”

* * *

Nick watched Sara walk through the locker-room door in the direction of the lab’s exit, and wished that he felt less relieved to see her go.

 

He could see the childhood trauma written on her face and body as clearly as if she had spoken the words aloud. He saw her eyes flash with barely-suppressed rage when she interrogated a suspected child molester; the stiffening of her spine when one of her colleagues got within touching distance; the pulse in her jaw when a rookie cop laughed too loud at a scene while a rape victim was loaded into an ambulance; and the way she tried to shield photos of the evidence of sexual violence from her male colleagues.

He felt bad for her, bad enough to ask her for breakfast after the cases that made her set her shoulders resolutely even as the life faded from her eyes.

Mixed in with the empathy, though, was a sense of frustration that she seemed no closer to reaching out for help than she had on her first day.

He knew that it was hard to discuss the issues that she was facing. He remembered forcing his disclosure to Catherine out; deliberately choosing words that were non-specific because he was afraid he would break down and cry if he had to say _molested _or _raped. _He reflected that he would never have been able to manage even that stumbling, incomplete account if she hadn’t directly asked him what was going on with him.

Catherine said afterwards that he seemed perfectly calm and collected, but he could remember his terrible fear that Catherine would look at him with pity or, worse, disgust. She hadn’t, though, and nor had the therapist he had forced himself to see in the weeks that followed his disclosure, or the group for male survivors that he had eventually attended.

It had been grim, those months of wading through his pain and wondering if he would ever get to the other side of his anger and grief. He remembered how all-encompassing the process had been, how the abuse had magnified and filled his vision until it seemed to be all he was and all he would be. He could still recall the feeling of clinging to his bed, almost seasick with misery, as he prayed for an end to the memories and sensations.

It was fading, though. Assuming its proper proportion as something that had happened to him, something important and influential, but not the sum total of his life’s experience.

He’d spoken to Catherine once about how Sara would be a nicer person and a better colleague if she got some help. He thought he had been oblique enough in his approach to sound non-critical but Catherine had put him in his place with a comment about self-righteousness. She was right, Catherine, and he was aware that he was pushing therapy with the zeal of a convert. He also secretly admired the professionalism that kept Catherine from gossip, although his own standards were not so high. At the time he was so focused on his own childhood trauma that he was hopelessly intrigued by other people’s; searching for commonality, and a sense of being part of a group.

His fascination had eventually faded, and he no longer felt the overwhelming urge to discuss his abuse with everyone he shared a friendly drink with. He was thankful that he had managed to maintain some professional boundaries, and that Catherine was the only person in the crime lab who knew what had happened to him. He had divested himself of the shame that he had felt during the course of some hard therapy sessions, but there was a time and a place for personal revelations and however much he loved his colleagues he was glad that he had kept some privacy.

Greg probably knew. One day in the middle of spring he caught Nick looking at a website for male survivors of sexual abuse. He had made so little noise when he walked in to the lab in which Nick was using the computer over lunch, and the Texan had been too absorbed in reading about flashbacks to close the browser window in time to stop Greg seeing it. The lab tech hadn’t acknowledged what Nick was reading, just looked him in the eye while he let him know his Mom had called, although he had left the room and immediately returned with a rare cup of his gourmet coffee for Nick.

He was lucky, he reflected, and felt ashamed again at being so exasperated with Sara. For all he knew, she hadn’t had the same advantages of a childhood full of friends and family that loved him that had shaped the character to overcome his experiences. In a flash of realisation, he thought that in all likelihood it was someone in her family or group of friends who had hurt her.

Next time, he thought, he would just come out and ask. **[  
](http://dipenates.livejournal.com/4031.html)**

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>  Sara and Nick get called to a crime scene. Sara annoys Nick.

Nick fought down his irritation as he watched Sara push the last bite of her pancakes through the dregs of maple syrup on her plate. Their third visit to the diner in as many months had acquainted him with her breakfast habits but despite the grisly domestic murder that had prompted him to ask her to eat with him this morning, he felt no closer to getting her to open up.

Sara had been silent through all three of their breakfasts, once they had exhausted forensics as a topic. She had never been particularly good at smalltalk and the spectre of the conversation that they weren’t having was making her even more conversationally awkward than usual.

_This is the last time we do this_, he thought. He sipped his coffee. It wasn’t as good as Greg’s and he wasn’t quite sure why he was drinking it. He was bone-tired and looking forward to climbing between his crisp sheets and sleeping through what promised to be a wearyingly hot day.

Just as Sara finally laid down her fork, their beepers went off. _Shit. _Sara looked up from her plate, eyes squinting in the glare of the sun streaming through the diner’s grease-spattered window.

“I’ll call,” she said. Her voice was husky. She took out her cellphone and called the crime lab.

“Sidle,” she said, identifying herself to whomever had picked up the phone. Nick waited, adrenaline starting to pump through him. The hope of clean, cool sheets was starting to fade.

“OK,” said Sara. “I can go to Desert Palms for the kit and the photos.”

Sara looked at Nick, frowning. “No, he’s right here. But it’s fine, I can go by myself.” There was a short pause while the person Sara was speaking to responded. “No, really, Grissom…” She looked at her phone in frustration. The call was over.

She looked annoyed. “Grissom wants the two of us to go out to Desert Palms.”

“Sexual assault?” Nick asked, watching Sara carefully. She was shaking off her breakfast funk now, focusing on the fact that her skills were needed to identify and help secure the conviction of a predator. She put on her sunglasses and picked up her cap.

“Yeah. We need to meet CPS at the hospital.” A child, then. Nick felt a twinge of foreboding. He pulled some bills from his wallet and dropped them on the table. Sara was already halfway to the door of the diner, not even looking over her shoulder to see if he was following.

* * *

Chandra Williams was a perfectly nice woman but Nick was sure that even the children who depended on her on the worst days of their lives found her sympathetic tones cloying and patronising.

As a Child Protective Services officer her role was to stay with the victim during their medical and forensic exam and then take them to a foster-home overnight. Victims were always interviewed as soon as possible, in a specially designed suite within the hospital itself.

Chandra and Sara were standing so close together in the corridor their heads were almost touching; one blonde, one dark. Nick decided Chandra’s outfit was ridiculous before his better angels could chide him for being so superficial. He knew that CPS Officers usually didn’t wear suits, to put the children they worked with at ease, but Chandra’s denim jumper made her look like a pre-teen.

“And so,” Chandra was saying to Sara, almost so quietly that Nick couldn’t hear her at all, “when the teacher’s assistant saw the blood on her panties, she invoked the child protection procedure and here we are.”

“Has the SART kit been done?” Sara’s voice was louder. Chandra flicked Nick a perceptibly hostile glance.

“Yes, the pediatric specialist sexual assault nurse has collected the kit. They did a colposcopy and the tech said that you should be able to collect the video and photos in about ten minutes. They’re just preparing Annabeth for the interview. She’s already in the suite.”

“Great,” Nick stretched his tired back. “We’ll watch the interview with you through the two-way.”

Chandra shot Sara a look. “I hardly think that’s appropriate.”

“I’m sorry?” Nick said. “What isn’t appropriate about it?”

Sara placed a hand on Chandra’s arm. “What Chandra means is that it might be better for you to take the SART kit back to the lab and get started on the samples. That way the two of us aren’t tied up here. Is that OK, Nicky?”

Nick read between the lines. “Sure, Sara.” She didn’t quite meet his eye and he wondered if he was imagining the guilt that crossed her face as she threw him her carkeys and turned and headed towards the interview suite with Chandra.

He sat in one of the plastic chairs that lined the hallway, feeling tired and sticky despite the air conditioning in the hospital. When the sexual assault nurse examiner appeared he took the kit from her and signed for it, explaining that his colleague would collect the photos later.

The blast of heat that met him as he left Desert Palms was oddly comforting and he felt the familiar edginess of being in possession of unprocessed evidence that could resolve a case. He climbed into Sara’s Denali and began the short trip back to the lab.

* * *

Nick bumped into Greg in the breakroom shortly after he got back to the lab and logged in the evidence. He had gone in search of a caffeine jolt, to help him focus his mind before starting to process the samples in the SART kit

“I heard about your case,” Greg said, pouring Nick a cup of his special coffee. “Five year old rape victim sounds pretty heavy.”

“She’s only five?” Nick was beyond being surprised at the inhumanity of people but hadn’t picked up that the victim was so young.

“You don’t know how old your vic is?” Greg turned round and raised an eyebrow at him. “That doesn’t sound like the brutal efficiency of Sara Sidle.” He grinned.

Nick didn’t return his smile. “I never saw the vic. Sara and Chandra Williams got me out there so fast I’m lucky I remembered the SART kit.”

“Ah.” Greg busied himself with pouring himself a cup of coffee and wiping up a couple of spills on the counter top.

“It’s pretty freaking insulting that the two of them were desperate to have me as far from the victim as humanly possible.”

Greg handed Nick his coffee and leaned his back against the counter, sipping his own. “Doesn’t protocol say that women should be involved in interviewing children where possible?”

Nick sighed. “Yeah, sure, but we weren’t going to be doing any interviewing. We were just going to be watching through the two-way.”

Greg surveyed Nick, who was leaning forward in one of the breakroom chairs, holding his coffee in two hands as if he was trying to get warm from the heat of the cup. “Did you really want to watch that interview?”

Nick looked up from his cup. “Of course not, Greg.” He shook his head. “Just like I don’t want to process tiny underwear, but I will because it might help catch the perp. I just wish that Chandra and Sara didn’t put me in the same category as men who do things like this.”

Greg took a huge gulp of his coffee. “It’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Lord knows that this job teaches us that much, and that must go double for Chandra.”

Nick shrugged. “I guess.”

“How is Sara doing?” Greg’s tone was light but Nick knew what he meant. He wanted to know if Sara was already too invested; too emotionally involved in the case. If her empathy was already bleeding into sympathy and skirting at the edges of propriety. Nick drained his cup and handed it to Greg.

“Thanks for that, man. I feel ready to get going on that kit now. I should have some samples for you real soon.”

Without for Greg’s response, Nick walked out of the breakroom. The lab tech watched him go, aware that he had stepped onto thin ice by asking about Sara. He knew that he was isolated from the emotional demands of a case in the DNA lab and he had made the mistake before of cracking jokes when handing over results when solemnity was required. The CSIs experienced the crimes they investigated in a much more personal way than he did and even if they didn't talk about it often, it meant there was a barrier between the field investigators and the technicians in the lab. ****

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a suspect is interviewed, Sara continues to annoy Nick, and Greg tries to calm things down.

“Have you not made it out of here either?”

Day shift had arrived hours ago and Nick was blurry-eyed with fatigue. He hadn’t realised that Warrick was still in the crime lab also.

His colleague waved a bottle of Optrex at him and grinned ruefully. “Catherine and I caught a double just before your case came up. We were supposed to be handing off to the dayshift but there’s been a bus crash on the I-15 and they are all out dealing with that. We’re totally slammed.”

“How you holding up?”

Warrick waved a hand, as if to brush away the question. “Not so bad. I haven’t pulled an all-dayer in months so I was past due. You?”

Nick shrugged. “Just working through the child abuse protocol. Brass interviewed the vic’s mom and they’ve just brought the stepfather in. If we get a DNA match it should be a slam dunk.”

Warrick knit his brows. “You like the stepfather for it?”

Nick shrugged again. “Seems like the obvious choice.”

Warrick looked at him for a long moment and Nick ducked his head as if to avoid his gaze. “You OK, man?”

“Yeah.” Nick cleared his throat. “It’s just this kind of case, you know?”

“Yeah,” Warrick echoed. He looked up the corridor to where Catherine was talking to Brass. “I should get going. I only went to my locker to get eyedrops so I could focus on the hours and hours of security camera footage we pulled from the Blue Chip Motel.”

Nick grinned. “It’s so much more convenient when people get dropped at one of the big hotels on the Strip, where the security systems are awesome and the crews will help cue up.”

Warrick smiled ruefully. “True that.”

He bumped knuckles with Nick and strode off to join Catherine. Nick watched as the daytime AV tech joined them and started to speak to Brass, waving her hands around to underline whatever point she was making.

At that moment a deputy came round the corner and Brass held his hand up to the AV tech; an unmistakeable _Be quiet _signal. Brass listened and then beckoned Nick with his head, making his way to the interview room.

Nick felt his adrenaline start to flow again, watching through the two-way as the stepfather was brought in and seated on one of the familiar metal chairs. Brass sat down opposite him, body language neutral. Nick knew from experience that Brass could go anywhere in an interview; convey enormous sympathy, become a suspect’s best buddy, or become so intimidating that even Nick had at times found himself flinching away from Brass’s controlled anger.

Gregory David looked quiet and anonymous. He was in his forties, wearing a suit that was sharp, but not too sharp. Greying brown hair was in a short, nondescript haircure. _Comfortable, but not flashy_, Nick thought. He sat meekly enough in the chair the deputy had pointed out to him.

Brass regarded the suspect coolly for a moment. “So you know why you’re here, Gregory?”

The man blinked. “Yes.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you found evidence that my step-daughter, Annabeth, was sexually assaulted and you want to eliminate me, the most likely assailant, from your list of suspects.” The man hadn’t shifted position on the hard interrogation room chair.

Brass wasn’t so unprofessional as to look surprised but Nick could detect a flicker of a reaction to the man’s bloodlessness.

“Who says you’ll be eliminated?” Brass raised one eyebrow. “Before we get to anything else; when you agreed to come down and answer some questions you agreed that we could search your car. The AV tech checked out the laptop in the trunk and discovered some encrypted files. We know they’re images. Care to explain?”

Nick watched Gregory David’s face closely. His expression betrayed nothing as he said, “Those images have nothing to do with your case. They are connected to my work and I am not at liberty to reveal any more than that. I’d like to wait for my lawyer now.”

Brass leaned forward in his chair and placed two palms on the table. He had clearly, Nick thought, decided to go down the menacing route.

“_Our _case?” he asked, incredulity in his voice. “_Our _case is your small stepdaughter, who has been sexually assaulted at least once.”

The man’s face was impassive and, watching, Nick was perplexed by his seeming indifference. Tearing his eyes away from Gregory David’s face, he caught the glance that Brass tossed in the direction of the two-way and realised that the detective was waiting for him to swab the suspect’s check to get a DNA sample. They had a warrant for that, at least.

* * *

“Do you like him for it?” Nick asked, when, swab safely in his hand, he and Brass were standing out in the corridor.

“Dr. David is certainly an unusual man, but I’m not sure I do like him for it. He’s clammed up pretty quickly, but I don’t know that it’s guilt that’s keeping him quiet.” Brass drew one hand over his face. “In any case, it suits me fine to wait for his lawyer given the number of interviews we’re dealing with out at the bus crash site.”

Nick was still focused on Annabeth. He had every respect for Brass’s instincts, but he didn’t want to put the case on hold until the next round of interviews were possible. “What did her Mom say?”

Brass opened his notebook. “I interviewed her myself at Desert Palms. She married Dr. Gregory David two years ago after meeting him at work. She’s a nurse at a private clinic in town and he came in with a cut hand he’d sustained at work. By the way, he’s not an MD, he’s a PhD who works as an electronic engineer. Love apparently blossomed over the suture tray, and I’m sure his fair-sized paycheck didn’t hold Cupid up any.”

Brass looked at Nick. “I ran a background check on them both. Not so much as an outstanding parking ticket on Dr. David but Mrs David has a bunch of domestic disturbance calls from her previous relationship. No arrests ever made but that doesn’t mean her life with husband number one was a bed of roses.”

“Is husband number one Annabeth’s father?“ Nick asked.

Brass flipped through more pages in his notebook. “Yeah. Patrick Bryant. I’m running a detailed background on his just now. Something cross-jurisdictional popped and I’m just getting a clear picture on that before we question him.”

Nick rubbed his eyes with the fingers of one hand. “In that case I’m going to grab a couple of hours sleep in the breakroom before night shift starts. We’re as slammed as the PD with all the trace from the bus crash.”

“Half your luck.” There was no sting in Brass’s words as he pulled out his cell phone and half-smiled at Nick.

* * *

Greg hesitated as he approached the layout room. He could see through the window that Sara was completely absorbed in the task of reviewing what he assumed were Annabeth David’s SART kit photos.

He paused in the doorway, his voice more tentative than normal. “I have DNA results for Annabeth David, Janet David and Gregory David against comparators from the SART kit.”

Sara cast a panicked glance at the layout table and stepped towards Greg so that she obscured his view of the photos that she had laid out.

He looked her in the eye. “Nick’s asleep so I thought I would share them with you first.”

“Can I, um, come and get them from you after I’ve finished up here?” Her voice was strained.

Greg waved the buff folder he was carrying at her. “There are unidentified samples that probably should be run through CODIS. Should I wake Nick?”

“No, “ Sara said firmly. Greg raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be as quick as I can with the photo evidence and then I’ll come to the DNA lab.” It was a dismissal and Greg was about to turn on his heel and go back to his lab when Nick appeared behind him.

“Hey, sleepyhead, want to hear the DNA results on your case?” Greg grinned at Nick.

“Sure.” He rubbed his eyes and focused on Sara, who was still standing in the middle of the layout room floor. “Are these the SART photos?” He gestured at the layout table. Greg caught his eye and shook his head, an almost imperceptible movement.

“I’m just finishing up,” said Sara. “Why don’t you go discuss the DNA results with Greg and I’ll be there as soon as I can?” She rubbed one arm with the opposite hand, shoulders hunched.

Nick broke the tension in the room. “Sounds like a plan.”

* * *

“You see?” Nick said to Greg as they walked in the direction of the DNA lab. “She couldn’t have been any clearer that I wasn’t allowed to see the photos. What does she think? That I'm going to get off on them?”

His voice had risen and a stray tech from the day shift glanced curiously towards Nick and Greg as she sped in the direction of the locker room.

Greg sighed. “Let’s save the conspiracy theories until we’re back at my workstation, huh?”

Nick shot him an annoyed look, but they walked the rest of the way to Greg’s bench in silence.**[  
](http://dipenates.livejournal.com/4424.html)**

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Greg reassures Nick, a new suspect emerges, and a search warrant is executed.

Greg could tell that Nick was still simmering with rage even as Greg gave him the DNA results and they talked about the fact that that Dr. David’s DNA hadn’t been found anywhere on his stepdaughter or her clothes.

The muscle in Nick’s jaw was jumping as started a search in CODIS for the as yet unattributed DNA. Greg looked at the grim expression on Nick’s face as he hunched over the computer in the DNA lab and tried to work out how best he could get his co-worker to calm down and focus on the case at hand.

Nick looked up from the screen and caught Greg staring. He made a frustrated noise. “I know you think I’m over-reacting, but if you do get in the field do you want Sara treating you like you’re some kind of pervert?”

“Is that what you feel she’s doing?” Greg’s tone was noncommittal.

“You were right there.” Nick shook his head. “She was stopping both of us from getting in to the layout room. She thinks that there would be something inappropriate about us seeing those photos.”

“Did she say that?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Does she have to?”

Greg shrugged. “I’ve seen Catherine do the same thing with SART kit photos. Hell, I’ve seen _Archie_ do the same thing with AV evidence. Isn’t it better if as few people as possible see photos that victims probably wish were never taken?”

“I don’t think you’re quite getting it, Greg.” Nick gestured dismissively.

“I think I might be,” Greg said carefully. “Nick, we’re all on the same team. We’re all on Team Good Guy. No one thinks you have anything but the greatest respect for the victims you process: not Sara, not Catherine.” He paused, choosing his words. “On the other hand, the victims can’t tell at a glance that you’re on Team Good Guy rather than Team Bad Guy and I think it’s important to respect their sensitivities.”

“I can’t stand that they think I’m one of _them_," Nick said, fiercely.

“One of whom?” Greg was confused.

Nick looked down at the computer in front of him. “Someone who would hurt a child.”

Greg frowned. “Nick!” He held his hands apart in front of him. “There is a million light years between not wanting everyone on shift traipsing through the layout room to look at a child’s SART kit photos and thinking you’re a child rapist.”

Nick winced.

“Sorry,” Greg said, without thinking.

Nick’s head jerked up.

“Sorry for what?” His voice was tight with apprehension.

Greg made a split-second decision. “For reminding you of things you don’t want to think about, I guess.”

Nick looked at him, face unreadable.

Greg cleared his throat. “If you don’t want to talk about it with me, dude, that’s totally cool. I didn’t mean to bring it up. I just figured that you were looking at that website for yourself. If it was something else, then I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

“It’s OK. ” Nick was staring at the computer screen again. His shoulders were slightly hunched, as if he was trying to protect himself from the fact the conversation was happening at all. "They were the right conclusions."

The silence stretched out between them, neither man entirely sure how to continue the conversation. Nick avoided Greg's gaze and was feigning absorption in the CODIS search that was flickering on the screen.

“When I was in college my room-mate melted down.” Greg broke the silence. “One night I came back to our room and he’d cut his wrists. He eventually told me that his father abused him and that getting away from home made him realise what had happened.” Greg sighed. “I don’t know much but I read some books about what he was going through. If you ever need or want to talk...” He trailed off.

Nick was looking at Greg with a new respect. “Thanks, man.”

There was another silence, but this one was warmer; less awkward. Nick shook his head. “I was so wrapped in Sara and what I thought she was thinking about this case that I don’t think I realised how my reaction to her was so tied up in my own stuff.”

Greg brushed an imaginary speck of dust off the workbench in front of him. “I don’t mean to minimise your experience when I say this, but these cases are hard on everyone. For you and Sara, it’s a reminder. For Catherine, I bet she goes home and gives Lindsey a huge hug. For me, it reminds me of Andrew.”

“Has Sara ever talked to you about…” Nick left his question hanging.

“No.” Greg shook his head emphatically, face serious. “It just seems like a logical explanation for some of the ways she reacts to things; her dedication to some types of victims.” He looked at Nick. “Including her somewhat black and white thinking about perps and victims and who they are.”

“Yeah.” Nick fiddled with the edge of the file he had laid down on the bench. “You were a pretty awesome room-mate to do so much research to help Andrew.”

Greg grinned. “Truth be told,” he said, blushing slightly, “I was a little bit in love with him.”

“Yeah?” Nick smiled, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I was 18 years old and had a romantic vision of myself as his rescuer. He was more into some snotty fratboy who insisted they stay on the down low” Nick could hear the hurt in Greg’s voice.

The lab tech shook himself slightly under Nick’s questioning gaze. “Anyway, enough remembrance of things past. CODIS giving you anything useful yet?”

Nick looked down at the CODIS results on the screen: _No Match. _

“No match,” he said, as his pager went off. He looked at it.

“Apparently Dr. David’s lawyer has arrived. Sebastian Saunders is in reception.”

Greg did a double-take. “The mob lawyer?”

Nick put his pager back on his belt. “The very same.”

* * *

Sebastian Saunders looked like he had stepped directly into the reception of the Las Vegas Crime Lab from a London townhouse. A handsome man in his mid thirties, he was dressed in what Hodges had informed Nick was an Anderson &amp; Sheppard suit. Hodges had also admired his Olga Berluti shoes and was no doubt going on to offer a comment on his briefcase before Nick cut him off mid-sentence with a reminder that Hodges worked in trace and not for Vogue magazine.

The lawyer showed Brass the results of his expensive orthodontic work. “Is it possible, Captain Brass, for me to see my client?” Nick could have sworn that Saunders was trying to cultivate a fake British accent, and swallowed a smirk.

“Not your usual kind of client is he, Counsellor?” Brass’s face was impassive. “Unless, of course, he’s not actually a mild-mannered engineer but is the criminal mastermind behind an international drugs organisation, and responsible for a batch of bodies buried out there in the desert.”

Sebastian Saunders raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Don’t be ridiculous, Captain Brass. His employer has concerns about its intellectual property, which it understands from Mrs. David was in his possession at the time he came for questioning. Now, shall we get on with things? The real perpetrator is presumably wandering around somewhere sizing up other young girls for similar treatment.”

Brass didn’t even blink. “Your guy isn’t off the hook yet.”

“Oh really?” Saunders’ voice was supercilious. “And you have DNA evidence linking him to the assault do you?” He read the ensuing silence accurately. “So we’re all just wasting our time here, aren’t we?”

Brass smiled a slow smile. “I don't think we've heard all that Dr. David has to say. There may still be information that would assist us with our investigation. And I for one would like to be enlightened on why he doesn’t seem to give a damn that his stepdaughter has been violently raped. He didn’t look so much as concerned when I was speaking to him before.”

Saunders’ laughed, a short mocking laugh. “Are you familiar with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Captain?”

Brass raised his eyebrows. “Come again?”

“Dr. David has Asperger Syndrome. My understanding of LVPD procedure is that he should have had access to a specialist advocate. I do hope that as well as failing to provide that advocate you are not also interpreting his symptoms as guilt?”

Brass looked at Nick. “We weren’t told that Dr. David has Asperger Syndrome and I didn't spend enough time with him to even suspect that was the case. Our conversation was brief.”

Nick nodded in agreement. He was aware that Asperger Syndrome made it challenging for sufferers to process information and relate to other people, and Dr. David’s flat response to Brass’s questions made sense in light of his diagnosis. However, he had also seen killers, arsonists and rapists who had shown no remorse and it hadn’t been possible to work out why Dr. David had seemed so indifferent to Annabeth’s suffering.

Brass turned back to Saunders. “I’ll take you to your client now. I’d like to check this out with the undersheriff.”

Saunders nodded. “I’m sure that my client will be as co-operative as is possible, now you have established that DNA evidence has excluded him from primary involvement in this hateful crime.”

Nick was aware that his own expression was sardonic as he watched Saunders and Brass head towards the interview room. Saunders’ distaste for the crime they were investigating would have been more believable had he not mounted a full-throated defense some years previously of a Las Vegas mobster who had fathered a child with his own twelve year old daughter.

“Nick!” Sara had appeared at his side. “I’ve just spoken to Chandra Williams and there’s a possible line of investigation she flagged up. Are you in the middle of something?”

“Nope,” he said, following her back towards the lab workspaces. “Dr. David has Asperger Syndrome, which explains his flat affect during the interview. Brass is going to check procedure with the undersheriff and Sebastian Saunders is speaking to his client.”

“Sebastian Saunders is David’s lawyer?” Sara was incredulous enough to break stride.

“Apparently Dr. David’s firm has concerns about its intellectual property. There were some encrypted images on his laptop that he is claiming relate to his work as an engineer.”

Sara frowned. “Greg said DNA had excluded David. Do you still like him for this?”

“Not really,” Nick sounded weary. “CODIS didn’t give us a match, though, so we need more leads.”

“I can help with that,” Sara said. “Chandra just phoned me and said that she spoke with the school to follow-up their referral and keep them in the loop. Apparently, the school is seeking legal advice about getting a restraining order for Annabeth’s father, Patrick Bryant.”

“A restraining order?” Nick echoed. “There was nothing indicating violence in his record, apart from domestic disturbance calls relating to when he was married to Mrs. David.”

Sara shot Nick a look.

“I mean, of course that’s indicative of violence,” Nick corrected himself. “I meant to say that there was nothing recent, and certainly nothing from Annabeth’s school. That would have raised instant red flags.”

Sara glanced down at the notes she had taken from her call with Chandra Williams. “Apparently, Patrick Bryant has been hanging around the front of the school, trying to talk to Annabeth through the fence. He does have visitation and Annabeth stays over there every other weekend, but Annabeth would come into school crying after he spoke to her and he was starting to freak out the other children.”

Nick whistled. “That’s not enough for a search warrant, but we definitely need to pick him up for an interview.”

Brass walked into the room. “News for you two on that cross-jurisdiction hit on Patrick Bryant I mentioned earlier. A UK crime agency did a child and violent pornography sting operation last year and they passed the data over to the FBI. The Bureau actioned the child pornography leads but the violent stuff isn’t criminalised here so the information was filed.”

“So what was he caught looking at?” Sara asked.

“I’m getting there, Sara,” Brass said. “The local Bureau field office has been chasing that down for me for the past day or so and just faxed over the file. Their experts couldn’t determine whether the women in the images were children or legal so no further action was taken. It’s certainly violent, though.”

He handed the file over the Sara. “If we really push our luck then we might get a search warrant on the back of those images and the previous domestic disturbance calls.”

“There’s something else, too,” Sara said, and explained about Patrick Bryant’s presence at Annabeth’s school.

“I’ll start dialling sympathetic judges,” Brass said. “A uniform will also go out to pick up Patrick Bryant, and you two head out to his house. I should have the search warrant squared away by the time you get there.”

* * *

Sara pulled her seatbelt across her chest and secured it with a click. She leaned against the headrest as Nick swung himself into the driver’s seat of his Denali.

He looked at her as he turned the ignition key. “You OK?”

“Sure,” she said, without opening her eyes.

“These cases are tough,” Nick said, pulling out of the crime lab car park and turning in the direction of Patrick Bryant’s house.

“Yeah.” She opened her eyes and turned her head towards him. He could see her chewing her lip out the corner of his eye. “I’m glad we ended up working this case together.”

Nick hadn’t expected that. “You are?”

“You work these cases really hard. You don’t give up. Cassie McBride has that to be thankful for, but so do a lot of other kids”

Nick chose his words carefully. “It’s important to me that kids are safe. If someone hurts them I want to help get their safety back as quickly as possible.”

“Me too.” Sara was looking out of the window now.

Nick has just opened his mouth to ask Sara more when she leaned across and turned up the volume on the country CD that was playing softly, effectively calling time on the conversation.

* * *

Patrick Bryant’s small one-storey house looked beaten up from the outside and, as Sara and he stood in the living room, Nick concluded that the inside was similarly battered. It was clean enough, though.

“Shall we start with the bedrooms?” Nick asked. Sara nodded.

Sara paused in the doorway of what was clearly Annabeth’s bedroom. It was decorated in pinks and purples and had a single bed with a unicorn bedspread, and some framed pictures on the walls. There was a small white desk in one corner with a noticeboard above it, to which a couple of photos were pinned. A slightly grubby area rug on the floor completed the sparse decoration.

“I’ll take this one.” Sara didn’t wait for an answer.

Nick carried on to the master bedroom, hefting his kit. Patrick Bryant’s own room reflected the fact that he had shared it with the current Mrs. David until they separated. The navy bedspread didn’t match the scuffed floral wallpaper, pale pink carpeting or the ornate white bedroom set. Nick concluded that it was a recent addition and wondered if there was a pink or floral bedspread somewhere that they had once both slept under.

He pulled out his camera and started taking pictures.

Sara came into the master bedroom just as Nick finished pulling a last pile of unmarked videotapes from the shelf in Bryant’s closet.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’ve taken swabs of fluids from the sheets in here and found 40 tapes in the closet. I checked a couple in the VCR in here, which I’ve also lifted prints from, and they’re definitely pornography. Girls, for sure, but there’s an outside chance they could be legal.” Nick shook his head as if to clear the images from it.

“I found more tapes in the living room.”

“You got to the living room, already?” Nick was impressed.

“Yeah, it seems like Annabeth’s room has hardly been lived in. I’ve bundled the sheets for trace analysis, but didn’t find anything significant. No fluids.” Sara paused. “I did, however, find another bundle of tapes in a high cupboard in the living room. I’ve packed those up. I also found a big pile of information relating to a group called Fathers 4 Justice, which I’ve bagged.”

She leaned against the doorframe, exhausted. “I’ve searched the living room, kitchen, bathroom and laundry. There’s no garage, so I think we’re good to go.”

Nick stood up and stretched his back. “Sure. Let’s get all of these tapes back to the lab. Archie can start sifting through them when he gets in.”

He looked at Sara. “Do you want to get something to eat, afterwards. Grissom said we should get some sleep in our own beds before coming in late for our next shift. I’ve already blown my overtime for the month.”

Sara smiled, ruefully. “Yeah, me too. Actually, do you mind if I pass on lunch? I’m craving sleep more than food right now.”

Nick smiled back. “Sure thing. Rain check?”

“Rain check.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sara can't sleep, Greg and Archie talk about porn, and Fathers 4 Justice appear.

Sara had been completely honest with Nick when she said that wanted to sleep rather than eat, but even after she had showered and climbed into her pyjamas, sleep proved elusive. She lay under the light duvet she used in the summer and listened to the air conditioning; her mind churning over the day's events.

She couldn’t get the images from the SART kit out of her mind, or the physical pain that she knew Annabeth must have felt. Although her current king sized bed with its crisp linen sheets was completely different to the narrow bed her father used to visit, Sara had never found bed a great place to be when reminded of her childhood. Despite her recent shower, Sara felt dirty.

She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed.

The Discovery Channel had always been Sara’s refuge when her mind wouldn’t stop replaying her own personal horror show. Animals were simple and lying on the sofa under a cotton blanket watching a documentary always made her feel calmer and cleaner. She fixed herself a cup of chamomile tea in her favourite Harvard mug and set it on the coffee table, within reaching distance of the sofa.

On that particular night, though, Discovery wasn’t distracting her enough to stop her mind going back over the short conversation she had had with Nick as they drove to Patrick Bryant’s house.

“_It’s important to me that kids are safe. If someone hurts them I want to help get their safety back as quickly as possible.”_

What did Nick mean by that? Did he just mean what everyone meant when they said things like that, recognising that children were smaller and less powerful and so needed special protection, sometimes even from the very people who were supposed to love and look after them? Or did he mean that he personally had a special reason for wanting that to be so? In the middle of trying to picture Nick’s face as he’d said those words, trying to eke another speck of meaning out of the conversation, Sara drifted off to sleep with the TV still on.

* * *

The first thing that Greg did when he came into work each shift was check EvidenceTrak, which told him what the DNA backlog was and helped him work out the order in which he should process the evidence he had been passed by the CSIs. He saw that samples from Patrick Bryant’s house had been brought in but they hadn’t been flagged for rush processing, unlike a large batch of samples from the bus crash site and two samples from Warrick and Catherine’s double murder.

_Freaking day-shift, _he thought. _How many times do I have to say, “If everything is prioritised then nothing is prioritised?” _

Greg decided that he needed coffee. There was plenty of work to do but the lab was quiet with so many people sleeping off overtime and reviewing EvidenceTrak had made him feel more bored than inspired.

Carrying his steaming mug back from the breakroom, he noticed that Archie was in the AV lab and pushed the door open.

“Do you know where Nick and Sara are?”

“Hmm?” Archie was in the middle of setting up a new clip, fingers flying over his keyboard.

“Nick? Sara? I need to speak to them about samples from Patrick Bryant’s house.”

Archie looked up. “I don’t think they’re in yet. They were here through some of day shift so Grissom insisted that they come in late. Overtime, overtime. You know the score.”

Greg nodded. Despite the fact that the LVPD crime lab was the second biggest in the country after Quantico, they were still subject to the same pressures to keep costs down as everywhere else. Greg, as manager of the DNA lab, was responsible for making sure that the DNA lab overtime stayed within levels set by Grissom.

“Are these tapes from Patrick Bryant’s?” Greg asked, as he surveyed the piles of videotapes that were neatly stacked next to Archie’s workspace.

“Yeah,“ Archie said, dully. “I swear, some of my friends think that sitting around looking at porn all day is a perk of the job but it just makes you realise how disgusting most of it is.”

Greg sat down in the seat next to Archie. “Yeah?”

Archie swallowed hard. “I’ve looked through ten tapes so far. I’m flagging five to the Child Exploitation unit at the FBI, but the other five are more than enough to make me wish I could bleach my brain. They’re almost identical in content to the recordings that some serial rapists keep as souvenirs but they’re definitely commercially produced pornography.”

Greg blanched. “Who would want to watch that shit?”

“Beats the hell out of me.” Archie looked down at the keyboard. “I go home after shifts like this and watch reruns of _Friends_. Just to convince myself that not everything in the world is about pain and misery. Then I pray for a nice license plate enhancement problem on my next shift.”

Greg nodded. He understood completely. “For me it’s romantic comedies.” Archie looked up in surprise. “Granted, I don’t have to look at the things you do, but my mind is more than capable of making up visuals to accompany some of the things we uncover in the DNA lab.”

Archie nodded. “I bet.”

Greg put his hand on Archie’s shoulder. “Any time you need a break from this shit, you come find me in the DNA lab. I can provide coffee and some good sounds.”

Archie smiled. “The coffee is always awesome, but I’m not sure I’d describe that crap you listed to as ‘good sounds’ “.

Greg made a mock-hurt face. “Everyone’s a critic.”

He got up to leave, exchanging smiles with Archie. The AV tech sighed and then braced himself slightly before hitting _Play _on the newest tape.

* * *

Nick felt oddly content as he tipped another bundle of papers from their evidence bag onto the layout room table. He and Sara had spent a couple of hours going through the Fathers 4 Justice materials that Sara had found at Patrick Bryant’s house and were starting to get a sense of what their suspect had been involved in.

“So,“ Sara said. “From this collection of agendas and meeting notes it seems as though Bryant has been a core member of the Fathers 4 Justice executive in Nevada. He’s attended all of the meetings and the others in the group seem to go along with his suggestions and ideas.”

Nick nodded. “And,“ he waved a pile of leaflets. “These leaflets are really clear about the purpose of the organisation. They’re campaigning at state level to have custody arrangements changed so that fathers get more access to their children. They’re also campaigning at federal level and the Nevada group is affiliated to a national group.”

Sara tucked her hair behind her ears and stood, hands on hips, surveying the table. “Is there any evidence of more local activity? How much time did these guys actually spend with each other?”

Nick picked up one of the leaflets and held it out to her. “It says on this Nevada leaflet that there’s a website with information about local chapters and a message board.”

Sara quickly read the leaflet. “We should have Archie check it out, while we run background checks on all the other individual group members identified in the paperwork.”

“You have got to be kidding me!”

Nick and Sara both looked up from the layout table at Catherine, who was standing in the doorway, incredulity on her face.

“What’s up Catherine?” Nick asked.

“How is Fathers 4 Justice mixed up in your case?” Catherine shook her head, one hand on her hip.

Sara handed the leaflet she was holding to Catherine. “Patrick Bryant, the biological father of our sexual assault vic, is an active member. We were just trying to work out exactly who they are and how they’re organised locally. We haven’t ruled Bryant out as a suspect, and there’s always a chance of criminal conspiracy.”

“You think a pedophile ring?” Catherine raised her eyebrows.

“We don’t know anything about them at all,” said Nick, firmly. “We’re going to get Archie to check out their website and message board, but neither of us has encountered them before now. It could be significant that Bryant is a member, or not.” He looked at Catherine. “What do you know about them?”

“Not much,” said Catherine. “One of the other moms from Lindsey’s school asked me about them a couple of years ago. She knew I was in law enforcement and thought I might be able to help her with an ex who was trouble.”

She shot a worried look at Sara. “He was violent and she was trying to stop him having access to their daughter when he became a member. There was stuff about the group in the media and it described a kidnap plot in England that they had planned as a media stunt. She was really worried that he might do something stupid.” Catherine blew out her cheeks. “Nothing ever happened, thank God.”

“Do you know what they do, exactly?” Nick asked.

“I think the idea is that they do stunts to highlight the different way moms and dads are treated by family courts. Fortunately, Lindsey’s friend’s dad was much more interested in posturing for the Review-Journal than he was in staying in touch with his daughter.”

Sara looked irritated. “So it’s a club for child-abusers and wife-batterers to bitch and moan about not having access to their children?”

Catherine half-smiled. “I’m sure there’s some decent, law-abiding men involved who are just concerned that family courts can be iniquitous.”

Sara snorted her disbelief.

“Let me know if you find anything interesting, would you?” Catherine asked from the doorway. “I’m kind of interested in that group.”

“Sure thing,” Nick responded, as the door swung shut behind her.

Sara yawned loudly as she packed the leaflets back into evidence bags.

“Tired?” asked Nick, as he resealed one of his own evidence packets.

Sara shrugged. “I never sleep very well during these kind of cases.”

Nick blinked at Sara’s admission. Normally she refused to acknowledge that she was tired or hungry, even if she was almost on her knees from hours at a scene. She was notorious for blowing her overtime allowance earlier in the month than any other CSI and for taking worse care of herself than all of the rest of them.

He had decided to take advantage of the conversational opening almost before he realised it.

“Me either. Brings up too many memories I’d rather not deal with at work.”

Sara froze for a second and then continued to shuffle the papers in front of her, carefully avoiding the possibility of eye contact.

“For me too.” Her voice was husky and Nick could only guess at the effort that it had been to speak those words aloud.

He remembered speaking to Catherine and trying to control the tremor in his voice; trying to remain calm and in control. His own words, the words he’d spoken to Catherine, echoed back at him._ It’s what makes a person, I guess._

She cleared her throat. “I should really get this stuff to Archie. Could you see if Greg has any results for us yet?”

“Sara, I think we should talk.”

She still wasn’t looking him in the face. “I can’t do this right now.” Her voice was small and uncertain, as if a wisp of wind could blow the sound away.

“Later then?” Nick was trying to keep the sound of desperation out of his voice, to somehow reassure Sara that what they were discussing was perfectly normal and reasonable.

“Maybe.” Sara waved the evidence bags at Nick in an awkward salute and closed the door.

Nick watched her through the glass as she paused for a moment in the corridor and squared her shoulders, as if to centre herself, before heading in the direction of the AV lab. He hoped he hadn’t somehow blown his only chance to reach out to her.

* * *

Nick could hear the Marilyn Manson spilling out of the DNA lab before he got within 20 feet of the closed door. He grinned to himself. Grissom hated the music that Greg played but the DNA tech was like an irrepressible teenager, in that he constantly had to be reminded to keep the volume down. Nick didn’t understand how anybody could think through that racket but Greg swore up and down that it helped him concentrate and, as one of the best DNA techs in the country, Greg should know.

“Greggo,” Nick hollered over the music.

Greg heard him first time and paused, mid-shimmy, to mute the CD player that sat at the back of his workspace.

“What’s up, Nicky?”

“Do you have any results for us on Annabeth David?”

Greg handed Nick a sheaf of papers. “I sure do.”

Nick scanned them quickly. “There’s a match to Patrick Bryant? Her father?” His jaw tightened.

Greg shook his head. “It’s not the semen. It’s from the sample LV08-AD1-06, which was marked ‘blood from underwear – waistband’.”

Nick’s face cleared. “There was a round spot of blood really near the waistband of her underwear. The shape suggested a spot of blood had fallen onto it from a reasonable height. We’ll see if Bryant has an explanation for that but it’s entirely possible that the blood was there before the rape.”

“Is Bryant coming in for an interview?”

“He was interviewed last night but Brass had to cut him loose. Before Archie had a chance to review the tapes and Sara and I could review the paperwork from his house, there was nothing to really go after him on. That, plus this, will be enough to bring him in.”

Greg chewed his lip. “I’m guessing the vic couldn’t identify her attacker.”

Nick shook his head. “Nope. She’s completely traumatised. The report on the interview reads like her concentration was barely in the room when CPS was talking to her.”

Greg looked into the middle-distance. “Poor kid.”

“Yeah.” Nick’s voice was quiet.

* * *

“So,” Brass said to Patrick Bryant. “I’m showing you a photo of a pair of child’s panties. Could you explain how your blood got on these?”

The Disney Princess panties flashed up on the video screens in the interview room and Sara, watching through the two-way, flinched.

“That is all kinds of disturbing.”

Sara jumped. She hadn’t realised that Greg had been standing a few feet behind her, watching the interview.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Greg gave her a look that was one part empathy and one part appraisal.

Sara reflected on the fact that was about done with people looking her up and down like they were wondering when she was going to flip out.

“Are you looking for me?” Sara was aware that she sounded snippy. She wasn’t Greg’s supervisor and he had every right to spend a couple of minutes watching an interview to get context for his evidence.

“No, I’m just curious about this interview.” His expression was unreadable. “Would you rather watch alone?”

“I could care less.”

Sara turned her gaze back to the interview room; tension humming through her body.

“I can’t believe you fucking people,” Bryant was shouting now. “Questions about that stupid, uptight fucking school. So I went a couple of times at lunch to see my own daughter. What’s so wrong with that? I was worried about her, ok? My bitch of an ex marries that android David, gives my princess his name, won’t let her see her own father and then wonders why she freaks out and starts wetting the bed.”

He jabbed a finger at Brass. “Then, the stupid bitch drags her to that creepy fucking psychiatrist instead of letting me spend time with her. Because some booksmart slimeball is going to have a much better handle on my daughter than I do. Fuck him and fuck you.” He sat back in his chair.

“We’re just trying to find out what happened to your daughter, Mr Bryant.” Brass was staring Bryant out now.

Bryant leaned forward. “Then you’re wasting your fucking time talking to me. I love my daughter and I would never hurt her.”**[  
](http://dipenates.livejournal.com/4969.html)**

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sara is upset, Greg and Nick talk some more, there is a break in the case, and Nick and Sara drink beer in the desert.

Sara could tell that Brass was looking for a neat segue into Plan B. He had gone through all of his ‘bad cop’ shtick twice. He’d threatened Bryant with a beating from LVPD officers and with _Oz _like tales of what the guys in the federal pen do to child molesters. Bryant looked, to Sara’s trained eye, completely unmoved by Brass’s graphic description of one of the nastier shankings he had personally investigated.

There was nothing much for her to do until there was another set of evidence in this case to collect and process and it seemed that the DNA lab was having an unaccountably quiet day as well. Her skin was crawling with irritation at the fact that Greg seemed so transfixed by this interview and by watching her watch Brass work. She liked Greg a lot but she found herself wishing that his lean frame wasn’t tilted against the rail under the window into the interrogation room.

She stretched her arms in front of her, fingers interlaced and palms forward and shook the kink out of her neck. On the other side of the observation window, Brass was again expressing surprise at Mrs David’s vehement refusal to allow Bryant visitation of his daughter.

“Oh, really? And your ex-wife let you stay involved with your kids, did she? Everything all _Blossom _at your house?” Bryant had hit home, although he obviously wasn’t aware of Brass’s complicated relationship with his daughter Ellie.

Sara knew that this was the out Brass needed. She watched as he left the interview room, to be replaced by a swaggering Detective McNulty.

“What’s going on?” Greg asked. “What’s McNulty going to do?”

“You’ll see,” Sara said shortly. _Now would be a perfect time to leave_, she thought.

She had never moved with Catherine’s poise and grace, but she always felt additionally clumsy during these cases. Although she knew that her colleagues probably weren’t analysing her every move, she did know that she was under additional scrutiny during cases like this. What she could never do was work out how to act convincingly like it didn’t bother her without seeming like a heartless automaton. She stayed.

McNulty eyed Bryant up and shot him a _boys will be boys _smirk. He swung his leg over the chair Brass had vacated; sitting in it backwards like a poor impression of James Dean. Although Sara knew he was play-acting, had seen the photos of the beautiful baby girls he doted on, goosebumps rose on her skin. Greg straightened his back.

“Captain Brass just don’t understand.” McNulty’s voice was oily but he’d also roughened his accent a little so it sounded more like Bryant’s. Irish to Irish. _Tiocfadh ar la. _

Bryant’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“He has a daughter who’s a whore.” McNulty laughed. A humorless hollow laugh that sent a shiver up Sara’s spine. “He thinks she was _exploited_ and doesn’t realise the dumb bitch was born to spread her legs for anyone who would have her.”

Greg looked at Sara, confusion in his brown eyes. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

She shot him a world-weary look. “Sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief.”

Greg nodded, still confused but prepared to believe this was a tactic. A way of the good guys winning. Like there was anything to win in a situation like this.

Bryant had uncrossed his arms. He was still clearly reflexively hostile to the detective sitting in front of him but McNulty’s smooth band of brothers bit was starting to seduce him.

“I know how it is when the wife leaves and all you have are titty bars and whores and the internet to take care of your needs. Am I right?”

Bryant nodded. Behind the mirror Greg looked uneasily at Sara. Her profile looked carved out of stone.

McNulty grinned. “And those dumb sluts on the internet. You get tired of looking at the same thing day after day and after a while you start looking for something a bit more _interesting._” He raised one eyebrow sleazily. “I’m a cop. After all the stuff I’ve seen, you know that there’s a difference between a good girl and a girl like Detective Brass’s daughter.”

Bryant was still nodding right along, a creepy grin starting to spread over his face. McNulty took his chance.

“Even the _young _ones. They act all innocent but then they wear their skimpy little nighties and hold on to their teddy bears and look at you with their come-fuck-me-eyes.” McNulty curled his lip.

Bryant’s voice was husky. “They want it. You can tell they want it.”

Sara closed her eyes, but not quickly enough to stop two tears from sliding out from beneath her eyelids.

She heard the small sound of distress that Greg made in his throat and his sneakered feet crossing the short distance between the rail he’d been leaning on and the chair she was sitting in, and wished that the earth would swallow her up. _Crying on the job, Sidle?_ _Crying on the fucking job? You have rules about this. _

Greg dropped to his knees and, channelling one of Nana Olaf’s most comforting gestures, reached out a hand to smooth Sara’s hair back from her forehead. She jerked her head away, body rigid with panic, and he saw the pulse in her throat beat faster and faster.

He froze, confused, hand in mid-air until the words _oral copulation _floated into his brain and his mind’s eye flashed, against his will, to an image of Sara’s small head held still by a giant hand even as she frantically tried to turn it away. His stomach roiled. He inched away from Sara, trying to give her some space.

“Sara, it’s okay.” His words were gentle, almost a benediction. They sat for a minute in total silence.

“Sara?”

Sara rubbed her eyes. Bryant’s words had felt like a punch in the gut but that sensation was fading and the awkwardness of the situation washed over her. She felt like a hostage taker who had lost enthusiasm for a bank raid mid-stickup but wasn’t sure how to end it without getting shot.

“Greg, can we never talk about this again? Please?” Her voice was full of an entreaty he had never heard before.

Greg shrugged his shoulders and then realised that she still had her eyes closed. “Whatever you want, Sara.” He sighed. “McNulty is playing quite the character though. It’s enough to make anyone upset.”

Sara opened her eyes. “Would you mind getting us both a bottle of water, Greg?” Her voice was strong and smooth. “We’ve both been in here for a couple of hours and I’m getting dehydrated.”

He paused, knowing that if he went to get water then this conversation would be over. Probably forever. “Sure.”

Sara hugged herself for a brief moment and then shook out her arms and legs like an athlete preparing for game time. She didn’t have time to crack up in the middle of a case.

* * *

Greg reached for the last two bottles of water in the breakroom fridge as Nick walked in the door, whistling _Deep in the Heart of Texas._ Greg rolled his eyes. Sometimes he was almost surprised that Nick didn’t come to work in a Stetson.

“Have you seen Sara?” Nick asked. “I have some information from Archie about a network of computer file sharers that Bryant seems to be a part of.”

“We were watching Bryant’s interview,” Greg said carefully. “I guess she’s still there.”

Nick narrowed his eyes. “Everything ok?”

“McNulty was interviewing Bryant.” Greg hesitated. “‘Takes a thief to catch a thief’ style.”

Nick’s expression was like steel. “Yeah, I’ve seen that show before.”

“Sara got upset.” Greg waited, head bowed, for Nick to think he was all kinds of stupid. “I kind of stroked her head and she completely freaked out. I didn’t mean to get in her space but I guess I didn’t think of what that might mean to her.”

It took Nick less time than it had taken Greg to work out why that might be a bad thing. The muscle in his jaw jumped.

“Is she ok?”

“Yeah, just wanted to brush it under the carpet and move on.” Nick nodded.

Greg cleared his throat. “I’ve done this job for so long. Processed all kinds of samples. I still didn’t imagine that that was what Sara had gone through.”

Nick raised an eyebrow. “What did you think we were talking about Greggo? A tickling game that got out of hand? That’s how it starts. Not how it ends.”

Greg winced. “Sara asked for some water. I should get it back to her.”

Nick’s shoulders sagged. “Look, I’m sorry man. I didn’t mean that to sound so--”

“Fucking horrifying?” Greg supplied.

Nick’s mouth twisted. “Sara’s strong. I knew it had to have been pretty bad for her to fight it so hard each time we caught one of these cases. I didn’t have to hit you over the head with it.”

“It’s ok, dude.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

* * *

Sara took the bottle from Greg with a small smile of thanks and cocked her head curiously at Nick. _She looks exhausted, _Nick thought.

Greg bit his lip and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I need to get back to the DNA lab.” He scanned Sara’s face nervously for some kind of hint that she wanted him to stay but she just nodded.

“So, Archie’s brought me up to speed with some computer file sharing activity recorded on Bryant’s laptop. Want me to give you the highlights, or do you want to hear it from the voice of the expert.” If Sara could see the extra warmth and care in Nick’s smile, she didn’t acknowledge it.

Sara frowned. “Bryant’s laptop? I don’t remember seeing that at his house. Did we take that into evidence?”

“It was in his backpack when he was brought in. Archie’s been trying to figure out how he’s connected to his Fathers 4 Justice buddies and to look at some of his file swapping activity.”

“Just give me the Cliff’s notes,” Sara smiled. This time, Nick noted with satisfaction, the smile reached her eyes.

“So,” Nick said. “While you and Greggo have been watching Patrick Bryant get us nowhere very fast Archie has been busier than a beaver. He checked out the ftp logs on Bryant’s laptop and Brass subpoenad the ISP records associated with the IP addresses of ftp servers that he uploaded pictures to.”

“Because Bryant’s been sending them porn?”

“Yes. The files that he sent are still sitting in a folder on his desktop. The ISPs of the recipients were all extremely co-operative.” Nick raised his eyebrows. Even the ISPs were starting to get that the First Amendment didn't protect their customers from the consequences of distributing pornography.

“So, do we have a list of real names and addresses yet?”

“Here,” Nick handed Sara the casefile. It had a list of names and addresses clipped to the front.

Sara’s eyes narrowed as she read down the list.

“What is it?” Nick asked. “Is one of those names familiar?”

Sara tapped one finger against her lower lip. “Yes, but I don’t know from where.” Her forehead crinkled. “I’m not sure it has anything to do with this case.”

"LVPD ran all their records and I have them on the tablet.” Nick passed the tablet computer to Sara and she began to flip through the records until she found the one she was looking for.

“Dr. William McGregor. A psychiatrist.” Sara’s brow was still furrowed as she read the information on the screen. Her face cleared. “That’s it. He’s described here as an expert witness.”

She looked up at a confused Nick. “Chandra was telling me about this guy.”

“Chandra?” Nick was trying to be polite. The half-grimace he received from Sara told him that he hadn’t been successful.

“She was bitching about him. Apparently he’s testified in a few child abuse cases that she’s aware of about the unreliability of children’s memories.”

“Yeah?”

“His thesis was on implanting memories of trauma. That’s the line he peddles for juries. That it’s irresponsible therapists who manufacture these memories.”

Nick folded his arms over his chest. “So, children just make this stuff up? Out of a clear blue sky?”

Sara shrugged. “That’s basically what he thinks, according to Chandra.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s any use to us just now, but I think we should take it to Brass anyway. LVPD is sure to be building a case against the child porn ring we seem to have uncovered.”

* * *

“Dr. William McGregor?” Brass ran his hand across his head. “You’re telling me that Annabeth’s therapist is part of this kiddie porn ring?”

“Annabeth’s _therapist_?” Nick was thunderstruck.

Brass looked grim-faced. “Yeah. I guess that Bryant wasn’t lying when he described him as a creep. I just thought all of that was deflection.”

“How _did _McNulty do with Bryant?” Nick asked.

“Nothing that we didn’t already know,” Brass answered, wearily. Even though he had planned the whole interrogation perfectly, Nick knew that he didn’t relish the way his daughter’s reputation had been traduced.

“So, what do we do? Should we execute a warrant on McGregor tonight?” Sara was biting the skin around one fingernail.

“I don’t think so.” Brass sounded firm. “I think that we know that Annabeth is safe tonight and the risk reward analysis on him disposing of evidence versus us moving too quick comes out in favour of us taking our time with this one.”

He surveyed Nick and Sara dispassionately. “Besides, shift is about to end and there may be a mountain of evidence to process tomorrow. If he’s a children’s therapist then Annabeth is probably not the end of it.”

“We could hand over to day shift?” Sara tentatively suggested.

“I’ll just be happy to wait a few hours for the A-Team, if it’s all the same to you Criminalist Sidle.” Brass’s voice was mock stern.

* * *

“This was a good idea, Sara.” Nick took a long pull on the neck of his beer and pressed the cool bottle to his face.

Sara was silent, looking out over the vast expanse of desert from the rock that she was perched on. The horizon shimmered in the distance, marked by the occasional passing truck that kicked up dust on its way to somewhere else.

Apart from the awkward series of breakfasts, Nick and Sara didn’t socialise much without the rest of their team-mates. The impromptu drive out to the desert had been Sara’s last ditch attempt to avoid being alone with the grime from the day’s emotional drama still on her skin.

She took a swig from her own bottle, feeling the sun’s dry heat start to gather on her bare arms, and glanced down at her colleague. Nick’s face was hidden by the peak of his hat.

“Are you ok? After today, I mean.”

Nick’s hands stilled on the bottle, where he had been picking at its label. “Yeah, I’m OK. It’s frustrating that it’s taken us so long to get here, but we’re makin’ progress.” He shifted slightly against the rock he was leaning on. Decided to go for honest. “It’s not the same for me when it’s a girl. I mean, it doesn’t hit me here.” He thumped his chest.

Sara bit her lip. “Same here. Or not. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. So are _you _doing ok?”

Sara blinked back tears, thankful that Nick couldn’t see her face even if he could hear them in her voice. “McNulty is really good at his job.”

“He is.”

“Did Greg tell you I spazzed out?”

Nick weighed his options. “He was really worried that he’d done something irredeemably stupid.”

“He didn’t. He didn’t know.” She swallowed, convulsively.

“He knows I was abused. He thought I might have some kind of insight that would be helpful.”

“You had to explain to him why what he did was a bad idea?” Sara felt almost nauseous with shame.

“No, that part he figured out. I guess he didn’t want to upset you but didn’t really know how to process the information.” Nick was choosing his words with the care he usually reserved for job interviews and giving evidence in court. “People, even criminalists, often think that child molestation is a lot more PG13 than the reality.”

Sara’s head was bowed. “Was yours PG13?”

Nick shook his head. “No.”

Sara’s mouth crumpled. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK.”

“It’s not.”

“Actually,” Nick half-smiled. “It really kind of is.”

“How so?”

Nick sighed. “Sara, I don’t want to tell you what to do or how to feel but is this really something you want to get into right now?”

Sara kicked away a small pebble. “I don’t know.” Her voice cracked. “I just want to not feel like this.”

Nick stood up so that his head was only a couple of feet below hers. She looked away, scanning the range opposite.

“If you want to talk about this, then I’m happy to. But we have at least another shift of this case and I don’t want to bring up a lot of emotions that you have nowhere to take.” Sara’s hair flipping in the breeze was the only part of her that was moving. Nick could have sworn that she had stopped breathing.

She looked at him and the pain on her face almost took his breath away.

“What should we talk about then?”

He held out his hand to her. “Let’s take a walk. I haven’t caught you up on the crazy stuff my nephew and nieces have done recently”

She hesitated for so long that Nick almost took his hand away, nearly started to blush with the embarrassment of rejection. Then swinging her legs round so they dangled down the rockface, she put her hand in his.**[  
](http://dipenates.livejournal.com/5269.html)**

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a horrifying discovery, the case is solved, and Nick makes a startling revelation.

As Sara waited outside Dr. McGregor’s office for LVPD to finish handcuffing him and reading him Miranda, she was conscious of feeling well-rested for the first time since she and Nick had been paged at the diner.

Nick’s tales of his nieces and nephews had been diverting and their walk along one of the more demanding desert trails had left her with pleasurably aching muscles, as well as tired enough to fall asleep as soon as she climbed into bed.

The bounce in her step had lasted all the way through her examination of the first two cupboards in the glossy storage unit that stretched all down one wall of McGregor’s large minimalist office; through the photographing and searching of his neatly serried rows of academic papers and thick psychology textbooks.

The third cupboard held something so horrific that it took Sara a moment to realise what it meant; what the collection of jumbled objects signified. Even as she pulled her camera to her face, repeated the familiar smooth action that she had performed thousands of times, she felt something inside her retreat far away from the focus of her attention.

She clicked the shutter. Once. Twice. Three times.

She cleared her throat. Looked around for Nick, who was swabbing God only knows what from the long, chic grey sofa that was propped against one wall.

“Nick?” Her voice was strangled. He looked up, questioningly. “I think you should see this.”

He snapped the top on the IntegriSwab that he held in his hand, and labelled it. Stood up and crossed the room. Looked into the cupboard.

“Is that a fridge? What’s in those boxes?” His face was wrinkled in confusion. Sara watched as it cleared, feeling like she was looking at Nick’s familiar face through a thick glass window.

“Sweet fucking Christ.” If she hadn’t been feeling so out of it then Nick’s unusually baroque swearing would have made Sara wince.

Nick looked at Sara, traces of horror in his eyes. “I think we need to get some specialist DNA advice on this. What do you think?”

Sara nodded and snapped her phone out of her tac vest. “I’ll call Grissom.”

Nick stood in the cool, silent office as she explained to their supervisor and watched the bead of sweat slide down Sara’s forehead. He wondered if Grissom could hear the tension in her voice. Sometimes this job was just too much for anybody.

* * *

Jim Brass didn’t see many perps like William McGregor. It wasn’t what he had done that set him apart from the majority of the criminals that sat in the crime lab interrogation room but what he was.

The man who sat opposite him in the chair was middle-aged, neatly dressed in charcoal pants and a charcoal turtleneck and wore glasses with black frames. His short greying brown hair was tidy; his haircut expensive but unexceptional. He could have been Gregory David except that his detachment wasn’t a result of Asperger syndrome but the thing that a man more religious than Brass might have described as evil.

“Dr William McGregor?” It was a half-question.

“Interesting accent you have there, Detective.” McGregor sounded bored. “Not from around here?” Brass felt the first spike of adrenaline course through him as McGregor’s eyes scanned his face, probing for weakness. _Game on_.

* * *

As Greg sped up in the elevator to Dr. McGregor’s tenth floor office, he felt a familiar blend of anticipation and fear. Technical consults at crime scenes were interesting but there was a high chance of seeing something that he would rather not have seen. Grissom had mentioned some kind of refrigeration problem but he wasn’t entirely clear on what he was walking into.

The elevator pinged and Greg walked through the open door in the direction of the crime scene tape. Sara and Nick were on the other side: Nick was waving the ALS over the carpet around the large dark wood desk and Sara was paging through a filing cabinet full of patient files.

“Guys?” Greg said. “What’s up?”

“You look good in a tac vest.” Sara was smiling, but Greg could feel a strange kind of tension in the air.

Nick put the ALS down and stood up, stretching his back out. “Sara, I could do with a break and I bet you could. Do you want to run down and get us coffee from the Starbucks on floor three while I consult with Greg on our transportation options?”

Sara shot Nick a grateful smile and vanished in the direction of the elevator.

Greg raised one eyebrow at Nick. “Since when is Sara your gopher?”

The warmth had faded from Nick’s face. “I think she’s about to snap.”

Greg knit his brows. “What is it that has her so uptight?”

Nick swung open the cupboard door. “This.”

* * *

“I see that you have recently started acting as an expert witness?”

McGregor was unblinking. “Yes.”

“Care to expand on that?”

“No.”

“You don’t think it’s ironic that a psychiatrist who testifies that children make up stories of child abuse is now being accused of sexually assaulting a child?” Brass’s face was perfectly blank, his words without malice or sting.

McGregor steepled his fingers, like a professor considering a knotty logic problem. “Ironic, certainly. Something I care to expand upon; no.”

* * *

“What are those?” Greg was kneeling in front of the fridge, looking through the glass door at the stacked plastic boxes inside. Each was labelled, and the labels suggested that each of the contents related to a specific period of a few months.

“You’re probably used to seeing them in smaller numbers.”

Greg tilted his head and opened the fridge door to get a look through the lid of a box. Cold air rushed out and he realised why: the temperature gauge inside the fridge read 3 degrees centigrade.

Greg’s jaw fell open. “Are these used condoms?” He scanned the fridge. There must have been thousands of them, dating back years if the boxes’ labels were to be believed.

“Trophies.” Nick’s lip was curled. “I also spotted some latex gloves in a couple of the boxes.”

Greg’s stomach flipped over and he looked up at Nick. “This guy was a children’s psychiatrist, right?”

Nick nodded, not trusting his voice.

Greg slid the box back into place and stood up, brushing off his knees. He took off his gloves.

His face was hard, all business. “OK, presuming that the fridge has always been at 4 degrees centigrade or lower, then the DNA won’t have degraded because of temperature. However, the presence of moisture is still a problem, even factoring in that micro-organisms may not have flourished at that temperature, and the fact that the samples have been sealed in plastic boxes is not a good thing.”

Nick nodded again.

“There’s also the issue,“ Greg continued. “Of blood, because as you know hemoglobin inhibits PCR. I’m guessing that along with vaginal epithelials we’ll also find blood, given the age of the victims.”

Nick’s face gave away nothing.

Greg gestured towards the fridge. “However, the immediate transportation issue is clear. We need to keep the temperature down on these samples. I would suggest that we put each box in a coolbox and take them back to the lab like that. As we don’t really know what’s in each box we’ll risk losing the samples completely if we unpack them and separate them here.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, whatever we do it’s going to be fiddly to isolate appropriate samples, particularly as we don’t have reference samples.”

“I haven’t spoken to Brass yet,” Nick said. “But what he’ll probably want to do is start visiting the parents of the patients in the files. Of course, there’s so many of them that there may be some other protocol to follow.” He shook his head. “We need to work out if it was just girls or if it was boys too.”

Greg jerked his gaze from the fridge. “Hey,” he said gently. “Are you ok?”

“Please,” Nick said thickly, and stopped. He shook his head, knuckles pressed so hard into his mouth that his skin was turning white.

Greg swept a hand down Nick’s back from his neck to his shoulder blades; left his hand there. Nick couldn’t feel the warmth through his tac vest but he could feel the heat coming off the rest of Greg’s body.

Nick took his fist away from his mouth. “Stop looking at me like that.” His voice was thick with pain.

“Like what?” Greg was confused.

“Like you care.”

Greg knit his brows. “But I do care. You’re my friend.”

Nick stepped away from Greg, leaving Greg’s hand hovering awkwardly in mid-air. “This is work. I appreciate the concern but I just need to deal with this as work and then everything else as everything else.”

Greg’s face was a picture of confusion. “OK.”

Nick sighed. “Can we talk about this later?”

* * *

Brass was trying to keep the smile from his face as he went back into the interrogation room to advise Dr. McGregor that he had a warrant for the DNA sample that would convict him of Annabeth David’s rape. Warrick was hot on his heels brandishing an IntegriSwab.

Not only had the fridge of horrors been immensely persuasive to the judge who had been approached for the warrant, but a visibly shaken Archie had confirmed that Dr. McGregor’s computer had contained videos of the sessions with his patients. He had recorded more than their conversations.

* * *

With the fridge's contents back in the lab, Grissom had organised a kind of production line of CSIs to handle the first stage of processing all of the samples.

As she stood at a bench between Warwick and Catherine, Sara felt the same numbness return that she had felt in McGregor’s office. She cut, swabbed, and mounted slides in a fog of separation; hands and arms moving mechanically.

She remembered reading an article once about an international taskforce of forensic anthropologists and technicians who were working in the Balkans to identify individual victims from remains in a mass grave. The journalist had been basically working towards the idea of _how can you bear it?_, and one of the scientists had said that everyone worked without acknowledging the horror of what the perpetrators had done, that the distancing was a necessary part of coping. The scientist had described what happened one day when one of the anthropologists had expressed a tiny bit of anger towards the perpetrators and that punctured everyone’s coping mechanism, because suddenly the bones on every surface of their lab had a context of pain and misery.

Sara could relate. Snipping and swabbing and mounting were fine. Saliva and semen and blood and epithelials were fine. Thinking about the where and the how of the saliva and semen and blood and epithelials. Not fine at all.

As she carried through a batch of samples to the DNA lab, Sara was lucky not to notice the concern in Greg’s brown eyes, or to spot the way that he shifted his body to avoid even the cuff of his jacket brushing against her hand. If she’d seen she would have lost it; face cracking like the fragile shell of dissociation that was keeping her from feeling too much of any of this.

* * *

They all left at the end of shift. When it came to brute processing of samples, day shift were more than capable of picking up mid-investigation and all of them knew tomorrow’s shift would be spent the same way as today’s.

Sara had gone before Nick realised it, and before he finished changing his shirt and futzing in his locker he and Greg were the only ones left.

“Beer?” Greg asked, laconically.

Nick nodded. “Beer.”

To Nick’s surprise Greg’s Jetta didn’t head in the direction of any local bars. As he followed in his Denali Nick tried to work out where Greg was going. Realisation had only just dawned when Greg pulled up in front of an apartment building.

_This is one strange week¸_ Nick thought. _Hiking with Sara and now my first visit to Greg’s apartment. _

As he stood in Greg’s living room, Nick felt surprisingly at home. Greg’s apartment was furnished in Scandinavian-looking light woods and was immaculately tidy. There were the expected rows of forensics journals and books but also shelves of fiction and books on history, current affairs and politics. There were hundreds of records surrounding a serious looking hi-fi system and a flat-screen TV in the midst of a half-wall of DVDs. Greg, in short, liked stuff.

Nick was still browsing through Greg’s bookshelves when Greg came back from the kitchen with two cold beers. He had trailed a finger along a section on psychology and his eye fell on a book called _The Male Survivor: The Impact of Sexual Abuse. _He pulled his hand away, envious that Greg’s was out here on the bookshelf while Nick’s copy was buried in a closet.

Greg handed him a beer without comment and gestured towards the navy sofa. Nick sat down on its edge and looked at the photos in frames on the coffee table in front of him. There were some family photos but also one photomontage of Greg and some guy that made Nick’s heart thump almost painfully.

Nick remembered Greg going to Paris but hadn’t known he would be at the Eiffel Tower with some guy’s hand resting comfortably on his hip. He’d remembered Greg flying home for Christmas but hadn’t been aware that he would be sitting on his parents’ sofa in pyjama pants with his legs tangled up with the same guy.

Greg followed his gaze. “Brian,” he said, grinning. “It wasn’t meant to be forever but we did have a great couple of years.”

Nick looked at Greg and the expression on his face made Greg roll his eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t think I was straight.”

Nick felt seven kinds of stupid and was aware that his face was flushing a bright hot red.

Greg leaned forward and put his bottle on the coffee table. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” He looked at Nick questioningly. “We can discuss something more interesting than my sex life.”

Nick looked down at the bottle in his hands, frowning. “That stuff isn’t easy for me to talk about,” he said, eventually.

“Gay sex?” Greg asked, slight tension creeping in to his voice.

“Exactly,” Nick said.

“Dude, I know you’re from Texas but I thought you’d been in Vegas long enough to shake the Southern Baptist off you.” Greg looked disappointed.

Nick stared at him in confusion. “That’s not it.” He clenched his eyes shut and slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. _Why can I not explain anything right, today?_

“Nick?” Greg’s voice was concerned. Nick felt the sofa shift and the heat of Greg’s approaching body; of Greg’s hand on his arm.

Nick kept his eyes closed. “My father would never speak to me again if he knew what I was.”

Greg slid his arm across Nick’s shoulders and Nick was so glad of the warmth and the weight. He felt cold like he’d never felt before, with all of these previously unsaid words out there in the universe shining with truth.

“He used to take me and my brothers on these camping trips while my sisters stayed home with their sewing notions.”

Greg snorted.

“We’d meet up with other fathers and sons and, as we got older, the humor got bluer and the jokes about ‘fags’ and ‘fairies’ started. My father would never use the word ‘cocksucker’ but his friends sure did. It wasn’t just jokes, either. They would talk about how ‘fags’ were taking over the world and soon there would be no way for a decent person to keep them from polluting our schools and churches.”

Nick’s breath hitched.

“For a long time I thought that what my babysitter did made me this way. But I couldn’t tell them that either. Camping trips taught me that real boys liked it when pretty girls had loose morals.” Nick’s voice was bitter.

“How old were you?” Greg asked, arm tightening around Nick’s shoulder.

“When I realised I was gay or my babysitter first abused me?” It was unexpectedly easy to have this conversation with his eyes firmly shut; without having to look at Greg’s face.

“Both. Either.”_ **First **abused me? _thought Greg. _Jesus H Christ. _

“I guess I realised I was gay when I went to David Lowenstein’s house after football practice and I saw his big brother Sammy for the first time. There was a bolt of heat straight to my groin and I knew that I liked him in the same way that other people liked girls. I was 13.”

Nick paused for a long moment and Greg slid his hand through Nick’s and squeezed gently.

“The other thing. It happened for the first time when I was nine, but after a year or so the babysitter got her boyfriend involved and it kicked up a notch. It ended when I was 13 and my Momma decided I didn't need a sitter anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Nick.” Greg’s voice was full of emotion.

Nick shrugged. “Not your fault, man. None of it.”

Greg hesitated. “I’ve never seen you at any of the clubs.”

“I’ve never been to any of the clubs.” Nick stood up abruptly, shaking Greg’s arm off and peeling his hand away from Greg’s. “Where’s your bathroom, man?” He didn’t make eye contact.

Greg pointed and Nick headed towards the bathroom.

Greg propped his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. _This is too much, too soon, _he told himself. _Nick is a more private person than you’re making allowances for. _

Nick came out of the bathroom having splashed water on his face. He sat on the edge of the sofa again and picked up his beer bottle. He looked away from Greg.

Greg took a swallow from his own beer. “I feel like I’ve asked you to talk about things you don’t really want to discuss.”

Nick looked at him and Greg could see the shame in his eyes. “It’s a rule that I’ve had for a long time. Not to tell my coworkers things that are private. Keep some separation between work and life.”

“That works better if you don’t work night-shift, but I understand that workplace friendships can get messy.”

“Catherine knows about the babysitter. So does Sara, kind of. Warrick strongly suspects, but he’s not as pushy as you.” Nick half-smiled. “I just feel my secrets are out in the street for everyone to look at.”

Greg nodded. “I get that, but does it matter if everyone knows? Do you think you have something to be ashamed of?”

Nick bit his lip. “No, but I don’t want people to treat me like they treat Sara.”

“I think that people treat Sara as they do because she’s not coping. We both know she hasn’t dealt with whatever it is in her past. You’re a whole other story.”

Nick shrugged. “I feel like I have dealt with the babysitter but then there’s the gay thing.”

“What about the gay thing?”

Nick sighed. “Do you mind if we discuss this another time? Sara and I are meeting tomorrow to talk about stuff and this has been a hellacious day.”

Greg reached across and took Nick’s hand. “Do you have any idea what an awesome guy you are?”

Nick looked at their fingers twined together. “I’m just being a friend, Greggo.”

“You’re spending your day off wading about in a past that wasn’t a whole lot of fun to help a coworker who is hanging on by her fingernails. Don’t you deserve the same?**[  
](http://dipenates.livejournal.com/5436.html)**

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sara and Nick talk and then Nick eats pizza with Greg.

_I can’t bear to tell Greg what a coward I am_, Nick thought as he walked away from Greg’s apartment building and towards his Denali. Nick felt a twinge of bitterness when he thought about how together Greg was in comparison to him. It was hard not to be envious of the hand Greg had been dealt.

The day he could lounge about in his pyjamas with his boyfriend on one of the sofas at the Stokes’ ranch would be a long time coming. _Probably after Cisco and Momma are passed¸_ he thought with a shiver of guilt. However indifferent their relationship was, he didn’t want his parents to have to die so that he could really live.

But, how could he be with a man. How could he live a life that his folks at the ranch knew nothing about?

He felt a shudder of revulsion that last night he had stood in the shower, trying to relieve some tension by fantasising about the slim, tender boyfriend he would never have, when his mind drifted to Greg. He hadn’t stopped.

* * *

After Nick left, Greg thought for a while about human beings’ capacity for self-deception and how they could pretend that their motivations for doing any given thing were really what they said they were, rather than what they actually were.

Then he slid _Brokeback Mountain _into his DVD player and his hand underneath his pants, and pretended that Jack and Ennis were really the cowboys that he was thinking about.

* * *

Sara sipped bitter coffee in the same diner she and Nick had been sitting in when Grissom’s order to go to Desert Palms and pick up Annabeth David’s SAE kit had come through. She had only been drinking her black coffee and picking at the edge of a danish for five minutes, but she’d nearly gathered her purse and walked out the door seven times.

Nick had suggested that they meet at his place to have The Talk, but she had wanted to meet somewhere public to provide herself with an exit route that was less harsh than just getting up and walking out of someone else’s apartment. Now she was actually sitting in the diner, this slender protection against total humiliation didn’t seem enough.

She chided herself for being ridiculous. It wasn’t as though she and Nick had been whispering each other secrets at 4am that were now being acted upon in the harsh light of day. Well, they _were, _literally, but they were both mid-shift at 4am and fully dressed with neat hair; not wrapped in tequila haze at an all-night party.

Only the thought of dancing this dance again kept Sara firmly rooted to the plastic banquette. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life sleeping on her sofa and, she rationalised, Nick was as good a research resource as any.

Nick slid opposite her five minutes later and exactly on time; bringing the familiar clean smell of sunshine and soap with him. _If the Boy Scouts are ever looking for a signature scent, they could do worse, _Sara thought.

Sara’s fears about this meeting had been bad but as Nick ordered a stack of pancakes and some more of the brutal coffee, she was nearing panic. This was such a terrible idea. Their conversation in the desert had established that she and Nick had definitely shared experiences, but what if she told him something and she saw the unmistakeable look of disgust on his face?

She remembered how freaked out one of her foster mothers was the one time she voluntarily broached the subject. Susan had tried to cover it up with _you can tell me anything_ fakery, but Sara had known that she found the subject disturbing.

_What if I’ve read this all wrong and Nick is freaked? _How could she go back to the lab and discuss decomp and ballistics as if this weird, personal detour had never taken place?

As if reading her mind, Nick grinned suddenly. “Weird, huh?”

“Yes.” Sara’s voice was rusty. Unable to let the silence spool out, she drew a quick breath. “I’m sorry that I left you alone to deal with Greg in McGregor’s office.”

Nick smiled. “It’s OK, Sara. You looked like you needed a break.” His voice was light and warm, and a small part of Sara relaxed slightly.

“Yeah, seeing all those condoms lying there reminded me of the pile my father left in my Barbie bin.” Sara was pushing Nick now, trying to work out from his response to this grim vignette what the parameters of this conversation might be.

Nick had been ready for it. He had remembered the first meeting he had had with his therapist, and angrily telling her the worst of his experiences in the most brutal language to see if she would bail on him when it got rough.

“I suppose,” Sara said. “That I was lucky he was considerate enough to use condoms. Getting knocked up at eleven would have been pretty bad.”

“Being raped at eleven is pretty bad all by itself.” Nick's tone was mild.

Sara’s face tightened, reflecting the twisting in her stomach.

Nick’s expression flickered. “Should I not use that word?”

Sara shook her head emphatically. “It’s the right word. It just makes it more – real, somehow.” She folded her arms across herself.

“Yeah,” Nick’s voice was quiet. “It took me a long time to be able to say that I was raped and it’s still an effort to get those words out, sometimes.”

Sara’s face softened. “Nick, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” Nick said. “But why are you sorry for me and not for you?”

Sara bit her lip, thinking, trying to put it into words. “I don’t think about it like that.”

“Like what?”

Her voice shook, ever so slightly. “I try not to think about it at all. But when I do it’s either a big storm of memories or it’s bald facts that I can’t feel at all. Feeling sad doesn’t even enter into it.”

“I can relate to that. It’s how things were for me before I got some help.” Sara looked at Nick’s strong, tan arms on the table and tried to make herself unaware that he could really hurt her if he wanted to.

“Sara?” She looked up at Nick’s quizzical expression and she realised she’d zoned out. “What are you thinking about?”

“What if I go crazy?” Sara whispered.

“Crazy?”

“Yes.” Sara looked down at her barely touched danish. “I came here – and please don’t think I don’t appreciate this – because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sleep in my bed because that’s where it happened. Every time there’s one of these cases I feel sick to my stomach for a week. What if I go and talk to someone and my whole life turns into this?”

Her voice had risen above normal conversational volume and their waitress looked over.

“Sara, what do you think about when you see a father walking along holding hands with his daughter?”

Sara closed her eyes, fighting back the bile that was bubbling in her stomach.

“I know how that goes. Every time Catherine mentioned Lindsey’s babysitters my skin would crawl. If I saw a kid out with some older teens then I would spend time trying to figure out if they were being mean to the kid.” Nick looked at his hands.

“Wouldn’t you feel better if you lose those reminders? If every case involving a child or an abused woman didn’t hit you where you live?”

Sara shrugged, defensively. Nick groaned inwardly. _You sound like an infomercial, Stokes._

He leaned back in his seat. “Well, only you know what’s going to work for you. I guess I’m a little zealous in talking about how great talking is, because I honestly don’t think I’d be here if I hadn’t.”

Sara looked at Nick as if she was seeing him for the first time. “That bad?”

Nick covered the top of his coffee cup with his hand. “Worse than I can describe.” He shrugged. “I guess that’s the point. I’m not in that place anymore so it’s hard to do it justice now, but I felt like I was completely alone. Watching the world from behind a sheet of glass, and unable to take part or have what other people have because I was so tainted.”

“Tainted? You?” To Sara, Nick was ice cream and puppies and the smell of freshly mown grass.

Nick grinned at her confusion. “Yeah, I don’t think people feel dirty because they actually _are_.”

Sara smiled a tiny smile. “I guess.”

Nick looked at her. “Except, of course, it feels like that’s true for everyone else except you.”

“He said I was a cocktease,” Sara blurted, and suddenly it was out there; one of the three things she had promised herself that she wouldn’t tell Nick. _Because what if it’s true? What if Nick agrees? _

His hand twitched, like he’d started to reach for hers before he’d censored himself.

He looked stricken. “That’s the kind of thing they say to rationalise their behaviour to themselves. Sara. Parents are supposed to protect their children no matter what. All that ‘you liked it’ stuff is just bullshit.”

“But—“ Sara trailed off. Her stomach lurched at the fact that she had one foot on sacred ground; on the very edge of the precipice that was secret number two.

Nick didn’t need her to say the words and Sara had never felt such pure gratitude in her life, despite the fact that her cheeks were burning with shame.

“My therapist helped me realise that however my body responded, what happened hurt _me_. It wouldn’t feel like this if that wasn’t true.”

His voice was calm and Sara was struck by the grace that Nick was showing her. However much he had processed and healed, he was still sitting in a diner telling his prickly, defensive colleague that his abusers had at least got him hard and probably made him come.

Sara swallowed, hard. “How did you do it?”

Nick smiled, and she thought, not for the first time, that you could see his heart on his face.

“It’s weird. You talk and think and do these writing exercises. And it’s nothing, but it’s also everything, and something just shifts.” He reconsidered, tapping a finger against his cup. “Of course, it doesn’t mean you’ll never feel bad again. But it’s better. Liveable with.”

He turned his brown eyes on her. “Tempted?”

She chewed her lip. “A little bit.” Sara realised that there was something she had wanted to know and she rationalised that she might never get another chance to ask.

“Is it completely obvious to people at work?”

Nick wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. “People who’ve worked rape and domestic violence cases with you might think that you have a reason to be invested in them, but I kind of look out for that stuff anyway so I’m not a reliable judge.”

He took a sip of coffee and made a face at the taste. “Are you scared people at work know? Because I’m pretty sure no one would think any less of you.”

Sara picked at her napkin. “Catherine would.”

Nick rolled his eyes at that. “Catherine’s talked to me about my abuse a lot. In fact, she’s probably the person at work that I’ve talked about it most with. Not, I guess, that that’s saying much.”

Sara snorted. “I know Catherine said to Grissom that I was unstable.”

“I think that she did that out of genuine concern, because never in a million years could she raise something like that with you herself. “ Nick grinned. “You two have more in common than you give each other credit for.”

“Maybe.” Sara was frowning. “How about Greg and Warrick?”

“Rick is a great guy and we’re tight in a lot of ways.” Nick recalled long conversations about family expectations and the difficulty with meeting them, which Warrick thought were about his non-participation in the Texas criminal justice community and were really mostly about wanting a man in his bed.

Nick hesitated. “I’ve never been able to tell him though.”

“Why not?”

“He knew something was up after that case with the therapist and the rebirthing. Remember that?”

Sara nodded.

“We went out after that shift and got smashed at some dive bar and he kept looking at me like he wanted to ask but he couldn’t find the words.” _Or didn’t want to hear the answer_, Nick thought.

His mind slid over that still-painful memory. After years of shooting hoops and playing X-box, after helping Warrick through his gambling addiction, he’d hoped Warrick would have been able to step up for him.

When Warrick had dropped him off in the cab that they’d shared that night, Nick had been on the verge of begging him to come in. Nick had wanted them to go into his apartment together, turning on the lights and filling the empty space with beer drinking and companionship and talking-as-men-do. He could tell Warrick didn’t want to, though, and the invitation stuck painfully in his throat. He’d spent a couple of hours crying on the sofa with loneliness; the sense of being indefinably separate from every other living person.

“What about Greg?” asked Sara.

“I really envy the way he’s able to take things in his stride.” Nick smiled up at the waitress as she refilled their coffee. “He doesn’t always choose his moments to raise things very well but I’ve never really known anyone who can just talk about anything at all without getting weirded out.”

Sara raised an eyebrow. “You’re doing a pretty good job.”

Nick waved that off. “It’s strange.”

“What is?”

“I’ve just realised that most people at work know and it’s not really a big deal. I mean, the conversations weren’t comfortable to have but no one who knows has ever treated me one little bit differently. We’re a pretty close team, you know?”

Sara took that in. “What about people you’re in a relationship with?”

“Have you talked about it with Grissom?”

Sara shot him a sharp glance.

“Oh, come on.” Nick held up his hands. “Please don’t tell me that was supposed to be on the down low.” He half-smiled at her annoyed expression.

Sara sighed. “I told him about the stuff that happened between my parents.”

Nick raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“That he hit her. A lot. And that she eventually stabbed him to death to make him stop the hitting and - other stuff.” Sara’s face and voice were both empty.

Nick rested his hand lightly on one of hers, and her hand trembled but she didn’t move it away.

“I spent my teenage years in foster care. I guess I wasn’t the easiest teenager and, ironically, I ended up with two foster fathers who had the same yen for underage skin as my father. I didn’t tell Grissom any of that.”

Nick tightened his grip on her hand. “Why not?”

Sara hesitated before pulling her hand away. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Sara shrugged. “Gil is older and smarter and more established in his career. I don’t want to feel even more like I’m less than him.” She looked away. “It’s also that Lady Heather fascination. What if this, um, intrigues him more than it repulses him?”

Nick’s jaw dropped when he realised what she was saying. “Sara, Grissom cares a lot about you.”

She stared at him. “Loving someone doesn’t stop you from hurting them.”

He opened his mouth to say that he would hope that loving someone would stop you from getting off on their tales of child molestation and then realised that loving someone didn’t seem to stop you from beating and raping them, so maybe that was a lie.

He shook his head. _Surely Grissom would not find this the least bit of a turn-on. _

Sara hunkered down in her seat. She looked small and fragile inside the oversize sweatshirt she was wearing. “I couldn’t _be _with him, knowing that he knows.”

Nick tried to imagine telling a girlfriend and shivered. Sara looked at him appraisingly. “Have you ever told someone you’re in a relationship with?”

Nick crossed his arms. “I haven’t had a serious enough relationship since I went into therapy. Before that I wasn’t really telling anybody. I think that if I did start a serious relationship I would probably go back to my therapist to figure out what I was doing with it.”

Sara thought about discussing Grissom with someone else; trying to get some other ideas on what was going on with them. _It sounds OK. _

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment. The waitress came back with the coffee pot and Sara smiled up at her. “We’re ok. Could we just get the check when you have a minute?”

Nick looked at her, disturbed. “Did I say something to make you want to go?”

Sara grinned. “You said a lot to make me want to live a better life than the one I have.” She paused. “That sounds really dramatic, but you know what I mean. I just need some space now to figure some things out.”

She pushed her hands up the opposite sleeves of her sweatshirt, giving her a monklike appearance. “This conversation has been the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

She saw the tears spring to Nick’s eyes.

“Crap. I didn’t say that to make you feel bad.” She yanked one of her hands free and placed it over Nick’s, wrapping her slim fingers around his larger ones. “This was just a really, really nice thing for you to have done.”

Nick cleared his throat. “You showed a lot of guts by being here and talking about this. Don’t think I don’t know how hard it is to cowboy up like that.”

Sara hesitated. “How will it be at work?”

Nick grinned. “Same as always.” The smile slid off his face. “You might feel shaky tomorrow; I know I did after speaking to Catherine the first time. It’s hard to reveal so much after keeping it so tight for a long time.”

“Ok.”

“If you do feel bad, please know that the only thing this conversation has done is make me respect you more,” he said, fiercely.

Sara smiled. “Ok.”

As they were leaving the diner Sara reflected on how she’d felt when Cassie McBride was found, and when she’d first come into the diner, and felt new and bright. She had no doubt that she would feel like hell tomorrow, but she hoped it wouldn’t diminish her ardour for a better way of being.

She looked at Nick and felt a pang of envy that he was on the other side of the mountain that she still had to climb, but that was overtaken by a wave of gratitude that he had voluntarily climbed down into her valley to show her the way.

* * *

Sitting in his car in the parking lot, Nick checked his phone. Greg had sent him a text message. _Want to come over for pizza and the game? _He realised he did very much want and tried to convince himself that it was just the thought of baseball and pizza that was enticing him.

“How did it go?” Greg asked, as he opened the door to Nick. _He looks hot in that shirt_, Nick thought before he could filter it.

“Good. Tiring. Progress has been made.” Nick suddenly really wasn’t sure what to say or why he was here.

Greg nodded. “I thought you might be too wiped to cook so I have the takeout menus all ready to go.” He waved his hand at the coffee table and Nick noticed that the photos of Greg and Brian had been moved.

Collapsing onto Greg’s sofa, he accepted the bottle of beer Greg passed him. This was nice; buddies together, checking out the game and eating manly amounts of cheese and dough.

Nick ignored the flutter in his stomach that suggested it might be more than that. _He's probably not the least bit interested. And anyway, that just isn’t going to happen for me._

THE END

 


End file.
